Sunday, January 30, 2011

In July 2010 I wrote a commentary about Bisphenol-A, more commonly called BPA. It is a chemical that has been in wide, safe use for over 50 years, but has come under a horrendous and unrelenting attack by a variety of specious environmental and consumer groups.

Out of curiosity mostly, I initiated a Google Alert earlier this month to inform me whenever BPA was mentioned in a news story on the Web. Within three weeks I received 20 alerts, almost one a day, and each contained notifications on 15 – 25 different article references. That’s just nuts!

Why are Americans being bombarded in the space of a single month with more than 400 articles in magazines, newspapers, and on the Internet that are designed to frighten them into thinking that a good, safe thing is a bad thing?

It piqued my curiosity and prompted me to dig deeper. It seems that finding out who is behind these attacks on BPA, none of which has any credible science to support their claims, is proving to be a real detective game.

The result is that I have decided to follow the BPA story on a periodic basis in order to track and report how this classic scare campaign is maintained and spread. My research and writings will appear in “The BPA File”, a series that will ultimately be published on the website of The National Anxiety Center. It will appear monthly and elsewhere in places where readers have grown accustomed to seeing my writings.

I founded The National Anxiety Center in 1990 as a clearinghouse for information about just such scare campaigns and this fresh examination of BPA will be published alongside previous works including, “The Subversion of Education in America” and “The Enemies of Meat,” as well as the archive of commentaries written before I began my daily blog, “Warning Signs.”

The reason for this new series is that we have already seen any number of beneficial chemicals and products targeted in this fashion, often to be driven from the marketplace by class action lawsuits or banned by federal agencies and states.

Classic examples range from Alar and DDT to saccharine, all of which came under withering criticism from questionable sources using junk science, yet all of which have been proved over time to be perfectly safe and harmless when properly used. The same is happening today with BPA.

When the American Council on Science and Health, a consumer advocate group, listed “The Top Ten Unfounded Health Scares of 2010”, number one on its list was BPA. The ACSH wrote, “Bisphenol-A has been in use for over five decades in the manufacturing of certain life-saving medical devices as well as in baby and water bottles, dental devices, eyeglass lenses, DVDs and CDs and other electronics.”

BPA also plays an important role in maintaining a healthy food supply. “In addition,” said the ACSH, “it (BPA) has been used to coat the inside of nearly all metal food cans to protect consumers against deadly diseases like botulism.” If activists are successful in their pressure campaigns to ban BPA, my fear is that less-tested and less-safe alternatives will be forced upon unsuspecting consumers.

Here’s a simple question. If any of the charges against BPA are true, why then – in more than 50 year’s time! – has there been no direct connection drawn between BPA and the disease conditions claimed by anti-chemical activists? Answer: because none has ever been established through reliable scientific testing.

Human beings are chemical-processing machines. That’s what our bodies do all day, every day. We live longer, healthier lives precisely because of the discovery and use of chemicals, many of which exist solely to enhance our health and well-being.

Ultimately, as any chemist, pharmacist, or physician will tell you, “The poison is in the dose.” It is the amount of exposure and the route of exposure that determines whether something is harmful or not. Perhaps the best example of this ancient axiom is water. Too much and you can drown in it. Too little and you will suffer dehydration.

The same holds true for other chemicals, many of which are found in nature. Most crops produce their own pesticides to protect against natural predators and the human race has been ingesting trace elements of these chemicals since the dawn of humanity, along with the fruits and vegetables we know to be healthy elements of our diet. The amounts, however, are so miniscule – parts per billion – that they pose no threat.

This exact pattern exists with BPA as well; the so-called ‘endocrine disruptor’ we’re so breathlessly warned about in BPA is identical to a chemical found in soy products like tofu and soy sauce, soy milk and other related products. Strangely, we’re not hearing panicked cries to banish vegetarian food, Chinese carry-out and alternative dairy products for the lactose-intolerant from American society.

So, with Part One of The BPA File we shall begin an investigative journey that will, I promise, astonish you with the brazenness of a global campaign of lies intended to actually endanger your life by denying you the benefits of this particular chemical.

Alan 's work has a sense of timelessness about it, so anyone perusing these articles in the future will find them equally insightful as they were when originally written. For Alan's latest thoughts go to his blog, Warning Signs. For his past works go to The National Anxiety Center. I would also recommend reading his last book, Right Answers.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

I was supposed to post this on Saturday, but I have been sick. This week's edition the ASCH's Daily Dispatch really goes all over the place, including one of my favorite topics....DDT. I think you will find the insights on these diverse issues worth exploring. As I have said in the past....this is one of the groups I consistently turn to for the answers. There may be times that you will disagree with them, but at least they have a very simple philosophy; data in search of conclusions versus so many of the groups you will see featured here who have a philosophy of conclusions in search of data,

Enjoy!

New study pregnant with anti-chemical quackery
An outlandish study from professors at the University of California, San Francisco, published today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, reports that almost all pregnant women harbor at least one out of 163 different "potentially harmful" chemicals in their blood, urine or serum .

Can you see me now? Incidence of AMD declines
The incidence of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss in people over the age of 50 - a result of damage to the center of the retina – has decreased in the last 15 years.

Trials for new malaria vaccine instill hope
After reporting yesterday on the looming threat of the spread of a drug-resistant form of falciparum malaria, we now bring brighter news of two phase II trials indicating that a leading candidate malaria vaccine (RTS,S/AS01E ) provides protection against the parasitic disease for at least 15 months after inoculation.

Prescription drugs face acetaminophen restrictions
\Acetaminophen, the key ingredient used in over-the-counter (OTC) drugs like Tylenol and Nyquil, will be limited only 325 milligrams per dose in prescription painkillers such as Vicodin and Percocet, the FDA announced yesterday.

Chemophobia and Chicken McNuggets
The Montreal Gazette published an article by Joe Schwarcz, Ph.D., director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, on the subject of McDonald's Chicken McNuggets.

Congestive heart failure: Where you go matters a lot
The Annals of Internal Medicine has just reported on a large-scale study at more than 4,000 U.S. hospitals which showed that thirty-day survival rates for patients diagnosed with congestive heart failure were more than twenty percent better among those who went to hospitals more accustomed to providing care for the condition.

Genetic screening: Should the government stay out?
Yesterday's Science section of The New York Times included an intriguing article by columnist John Tierney on whether the government has a proper role in regulating commercial sales of DNA analysis tests to the general public.

Younger women should be screened for osteoporosis
Perhaps the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) had Gwyneth Paltrow in mind when it updated the guidelines for assessing osteoporosis to recommend screening younger women who present the same risk factors as 65 year-old white women.

NYT op-ed is a shot in the right direction
ACSH staffers were pleased to read an op-ed by Michael Willrich in today's The New York Times promoting the notion already long upheld by scientific communities that vaccines are a safe and extremely effective public health measure.

Counting down to eliminate obesity, or not
Much like counting sheep won't get you to fall asleep any faster, counting calories at Taco Time won't get you to change your order from the Big Juan burrito combo meal to a bland garden salad any sooner either.

Anti-DDT campaign has no meat, unless you count baloney
The underlying science used by a coalition of global public health groups to promote the restriction and ultimate banning of DDT use for eradication of malaria is false, dangerous and misguided, a new study published in the journal Research and Reports in Tropical Medicine says.

______________________________________________________________ If there is a health scare today, the American Council on Science and Health will most likely have the answer by tomorrow; and for members it will appear in your e-mail. No effort on your part, except to read the answer. All that the ACSH is interested in are the facts and they are prepared to follow them wherever they lead. Who can ask for more? Please Donate Now!

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Anyone who has followed the environmental movement for as long as I have knows that, at its core, there is a profound hatred for the human race.

Combine this with an equally intense desire to control every aspect of everyone's lives on planet Earth and you have a very dangerous movement, funded by foundations whose wealth was built by industrialists who must be spinning in their graves.

The movement is home to a wide variety of “intellectuals” whose vanity is their excuse for some of the most immoral and inhumane recommendations made daily. Their followers are largely gullible people with an extraordinary capacity to ignore reality.

Excellent examples of Green insanity are found in a December 19th article in the Herald Sun, Melbourne, Australia, by Andrew Bolt. He collected some “original tips of many experts on how to slash the gases they say are killing the planet.”

Among the twenty citations was Greenpeace co-founder, Paul Watson’s advice that the Earth’s population has to be reduced “to fewer than one billion.” Presumably, given this group’s opposition to pesticides, one easy way is to keep the ban on DDT that has accounted for the needless deaths of millions from malaria.

Bolt took note of Prof. Barry Walters of the University of Western Australia who expressed the opinion that families with more than two children should be charged a carbon tax "on their little gas emitters." Going further, Toni Vernelli of PETA, the animal rights group, says she took steps to avoid having a child because she felt “It would have been immoral to give birth to a child that I felt strongly would only be a burden to the world.” Nor is she alone. Dr. John Reid, a former Swinburne University academic recommending putting “something in the water, a virus that would be specific to the human reproductive system, and would make a substantial proportion of the population unfertile.”

If any of this reminds you of the Nazi view that some life was “unworthy of life” and, acting on this belief, set up death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, communists, unionists, and anyone who disagreed with them for any reason. They had begun by killing the mentally ill and retarded among them until ordinary Germans protested.

Little wonder Pope Benedict XVI recently warned against the scare-mongering behind global warming. He said that it is vital that the international community base its policies on science rather than the dogma of the environmental movement.

I cited these few examples because environmentalism is, at its heart, anti-human and virtually all of its goals are designed to reduce human life by, among other proposals, denying electricity where there is none, the banning of pesticides to reduce insect and rodent predation of crops and food, attacking the use of genetically modified seeds to increase crops that are made resistant to drought or insects, or which contain Vitamin A to reduce blindness. Greens have even opposed the flush toilet.

Instead they work to shut down industries, to deny access to the mining of minerals necessary to the modern world, to make access to oil or natural gas impossible or too costly, and would even eliminate the use of incandescent lightbulbs. Al Gore, the most odious of these vile people has written that the world should rid itself of the internal combustion engine!

The next time you hear an environmentalist sound off, remember they hate mankind. For this alone they represent a threat as big or bigger than the current crop of Islamic crazies.

There really is no mystery to solving the nationwide bed bug epidemic. In 1946 the solution was DDT. Today the solution could still be DDT if it hadn’t been banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in the 1970s and, since then, any number of other beneficial pesticides.

I know something about this because, as a public relations counselor I have worked with pesticide manufacturers in the past and elements of the pest control industry today.

The problem isn’t so much the bed bugs as the brainwashing of Americans to believe that pesticides are worse than the pests. One of the reasons Americans live in an essentially pest-free environment in their homes, offices, restaurants, hotels, and elsewhere is the widespread use of pesticides, despite decades of effort by environmental organizations to spread and maintain an irrational fear of pesticides.

In the years following World War Two, the pest control industry had eliminated bed bugs to a point where today’s generation of pest control professionals literally had no experience dealing with them when they began to reappear in American homes, hotels, and other structures.

What is the Environmental Protection Agency’s answer? It is to hold bed bug “summits” in which industry and other experts testify to the obvious necessity to authorize the use of existing pesticides and expedite the registration of new formulations to rid the nation of this pest.

Today there is only one pesticide, Propoxur, known to effectively knock down a bed bug infestation, but when Ohio pest control professionals asked the Environmental Protection Agency for permission to use it, it was denied.

In December, Forbes magazine had an article, “America’s Most Bed Bug-Infested Cities.” Is it any surprise that three of Ohio’s cities, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Dayton, were identified as the most infested?

Among the other cities cited as suffering major bed bug infestations were New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.

A January 11th article in The Wall Street Journal, “City’s Problems with Bedbugs Getting Itchier” reported a seven percent increase in complaints about bed bugs. “Nationally,” the article noted, “one out of five Americans has had a bedbug infestation in their home or knows someone who has encountered the pests at home or in a hotel, according to the National Pest Management Association.”

The bed bug epidemic owes more to governmental regulation than to the experience and expertise of pest control professionals, all of whom must be licensed and certified by their respective States. Given the pesticides to address the epidemic, the industry could eliminate it.

It is shameful that America has to endure this epidemic, not just in terms of the physical harm that people encounter from it, but because it is entirely preventable. We are fortunate that bed bugs do not spread disease, despite the discomfort of their bites.

The last EPA bed bug summit heard 34 suggestions that would expand the bureaucracy at every level of government and expand training and licensure requirements. The answer is not more bureaucracy, but less. Not more paperwork, but the application of existing and new pesticides to rid America of the bed bugs.

The answer is more realism, less fear-mongering about pesticides, and the removal of regulatory barriers so that the pest control industry nationwide can do what it does best, eliminate bed bugs and other insect pests that spread disease and destroy property.

This is week two in my effort to present enlightening information disseminated by the ACSH. Information presented without a financial or philosophical ax to grind, other than to follow the facts wherever they lead. Dr Elizabeth Whelan (President and guiding light of the ACSH) was once charged with being a shill for her contributors by an environmental scare mongering group. Her response was that if they really believed that then they should write a check and see what happens. She never did get that check and the conversation ended.

As an FYI; each Friday I will post the information from the previous week and then link it in Green Notes on the next Friday, so that the Green Notes will always be a week behind.

Too much of a good thing? Fluoride water levels to be lowered
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the EPA have announced that they want the maximum allowable fluoride levels in municipal water supplies as recent data showed that more than one in three U.S. children have fluorosis, a condition caused by an excess of fluoride that can lead to tooth enamel mottling and discoloration.

Newer anti-psychotics may be over-prescribed
Newer antipsychotic drugs currently approved to treat schizophrenia are being increasingly prescribed for off-label indications, according to a study published in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety.

A vegetarian food pyramid?
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is calling for a vegetarian alternative to the food pyramid, claiming that adherence to the current food pyramid is not adequately combating obesity and diabetes, and is thus illegal.

Menthol isn’t harmful — smoking is
In our nation's capital today, hearings are taking place on whether the FDA should ban menthol flavoring in cigarettes. In an especially timely editorial on the subject in The Daily Caller, ACSH Medical Director Dr. Gilbert Ross notes that "no toxicity is specifically attributed to menthol." It's not the smoking of menthol cigarettes, he says, that is the problem, but the smoking of cigarettes per se.

Not so depressing: Prozac for stroke patients?
Yesterday brought news, first reported in the medical journal Lancet Neurology, that patients suffering a stroke recovered better when they were prescribed fluoxetine, the anti-depressant medication more commonly known by its trade name Prozac, than if they were prescribed a placebo.

Antibodies from H1N1 survivors may be useful
The Journal of Experimental Medicine has just published a study with a striking and unexpected finding: antibodies from the blood of recovered victims of the 2009 epidemic of H1N1 flu virus ("swine" flu) protect against many other forms of the flu, including nearly all H1N1 strains from the past and Avian flu.

Letters on smokeless tobacco and fluorosis
ACSH takes great pride in the distinction won by our remarkable roster of friends and advisors. Their knowledge and insight informs our work. Today we take delight in offering the perspectives of two men who contacted us about recent subjects of our Dispatch.

BPA, phthalates falsely incriminated in junk science studies
In a confusing study from the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, researchers compared 71 women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal disorder affecting up to ten percent of women of reproductive age, to 100 healthy women of the same age and weight and found that women with PCOS had higher levels of bisphenol A (BPA) in their blood.

Trust Us: if you’re over 60, get your shingles vaccine
Shingles is an often painful and blistering skin rash caused by the varicella-zoster virus - the same virus responsible for chickenpox - and is most common in people over 50.New study pregnant with anti-chemical quackery
An outlandish study from professors at the University of California, San Francisco, published today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, reports that almost pregnant women harbor at least one out of 163 different "potentially harmful" chemicals in their blood, urine or serum.

Can you see me now? Incidence of AMD declines
The incidence of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss in people over the age of 50 - a result of damage to the center of the retina – has decreased in the last 15 years.

Trials for new malaria vaccine instill hope
After reporting yesterday on the looming threat of the spread of a drug-resistant form of falciparum malaria, we now bring brighter news of two phase II trials indicating that a leading candidate malaria vaccine (RTS,S/AS01E) provides protection against the parasitic disease for at least 15 months after inoculation.

Prescription drugs face acetaminophen restrictions
Acetaminophen, the key ingredient used in over-the-counter (OTC) drugs like Tylenol and Nyquil, will be limited to only 325 milligrams per dose in prescription painkillers such as Vicodin and Percocet, the FDA announced yesterday.

______________________________________________________________ If there is a health scare today, the American Council on Science and Health will most likely have the answer by tomorrow; and for members it will appear in your e-mail. No effort on your part, except to read the answer. All that the ACSH is interested in are the facts and they are prepared to follow them wherever they lead. Who can ask for more? Please Donate Now!

Monday, January 10, 2011

This article first appeared in Alan's National Anxiety Center web site, here!

On March 14, 2002, a program to capture the Capitalist system and control it for the purpose of advancing the twisted values of environmentalism was spelled out in a presentation titled "Restructuring the Global Economy."

According to the Greens behind this plan, "Economic globalization is the greatest single contributor to the massive ecological crisis of our time, yet this is an aspect that is often ignored by the media, NGOs, policymakers, and citizens. Its inherent emphasis on increased trade requires corresponding expansion of transportation of infrastructures, airports, seaports, roads, rail-lines, pipelines, dams, electric grids, many of these are constructed in pristine landscapes, often on indigenous people’s lands.

There is a very big problem with the assertion quoted above. None of it is true. If the US, let alone the rest of the world, did not have airports, seaports, roads, rail-lines, pipelines, dams and electric grids, you would not be reading this, nor would there be too many goods in your local supermarket or mall.

Nor is the world running out of so-called "fossil fuels." Moreover, world trade is generally seen as the best way to lift Third World nations out of their grinding poverty while increasing peaceful and fruitful relations between industrialized nations. More goods mean more money and more jobs everywhere in a world that has six billion mouths to feed every day.

At the heart of the environmental—Green---movement have been people who are hardcore Marxists, haters of Capitalism and the corporations and countless small businesses that sustain it. Their problem, however, is that Communism doesn’t work. It has a record of having enslaved and killed millions of people who fell under its control.

To Randall Hayes, the man who presented his paper at the 2002 Johns Hopkins Symposium on Foreign Affairs, Capitalism "is an absurd economic system rapidly destroying nature, cultural diversity, and decent local life." Admitting that there were no "attractive alternatives" to Capitalism, he offered proposal that it "be radically improved, humanized, and ecologized."

The key word here is "radically." Humanity is not high on the list of priorities for the Greens who thrive on programs that kill large numbers of people deprived of pesticides to protect them against Nature’s greatest vectors of disease, insect and rodent pests. Deprive farmers of the pesticides and herbicides needed to protect their crops against these predators. Deprive people of electrical power from non-polluting hydroelectric dams or nuclear utilities and they remain impoverished. And, most importantly, deprive people of a voice in their affairs through democratic elections by destroying the sovereignty of nations.

The other key word is "ecologized" and that, presumably, means substituting the lies and other control mechanisms that would render what’s left of Capitalism the tool of a single group of un-elected Green elites operating under the aegis of the United Nations.

Who is Randall Hayes? He is the president of the radical Rainforest Action Network. He has created the International Forum on Globalization IFOG), described by Ron Arnold, the author of "Undue Influence", "Trashing the Economy" and several other books on the Greens, as "assortment of some 60 anti-capitalist organizations and intellectuals from 25 nations." These groups and others have been patiently and malevolently putting together a plan for global domination for decades. The operating element of the plan is the United Nations which, itself, has made it clear it intends to be the sole global government for the entire planet.

Up to now, however, no Green has so boldly stated the true intention of the movement. The plan would dismantle the institutions that monitor global trade and substitute UN agencies in their place. They claim to be driven by the desire to save the Earth and the basis for their claims are the totally bogus "global warming" hoax and others that assert that the air, the water, the soil, and all life on Earth is either polluted or endangered. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. It does not need saving, particularly if that means the enslavement of the human race.

What Hayes and his fellow Greens claim is hogwash! Every advance in science and technology has come from learning how to secure the maximum benefit of Earth’s natural resources.

Do not take it for granted you can place a call to a friend in Europe or Australia and hear them as clearly as if they lived next door. Do not take for granted that the water from your faucet is potable. Do not take for granted your supermarket will be filled with a huge variety of foods, products to keep your home clean, and other items, all of which arrived by truck. Do not take for granted that public health mosquito control programs protect you against West Nile Virus or Malaria. Do not take for granted you will be permitted to get in your car or get on a plane to go anywhere you want.

Nothing in modern life exists without the research and development that has extended your life. It has been entrepreneurs and corporations who have risked huge sums to bring about progress.

The Greens hate progress.

In this, they are financially supported by foundations whose goal it is to control the world’s money supply and, thereby, its future. They include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, HKH Foundation and the Turner Foundation, among just a few of those funding IFOG. All fund anti-globalization groups.

As Ron Arnold points out, Randall Hayes’ Rainforest Action Network is "a shakedown operation, as RAN’s arrest record indicates. He doesn’t mention that his organization used unlawful activities such as trespass, intimidation and vandalism against his targets." Indeed, the Internal Revenue Service "has been asked to revoke RAN’s tax exempt status for very offenses."

The IFOG plan that Hayes unveiled is a plan to rule the world. All despotisms proudly announce their plans. Had the world read and acted upon the rantings of Adolph Hitler’s "Mein Kampf" in the 1930s, we would have been spared World War II. Had the world acted to thwart the aims of the Communist Manifesto, Russia would have been spared seventy years of horror and Red China would not now be threatening the United States with ICBMs.

Hayes’ plan would give non-profit groups access to the most radical economic decision-making power within the United Nations. It would remove corporations and nations from that process. It would impose restrictions on the use of all natural resources and it would do so in the name of saving the Earth. From whom? From YOU!

I will re-run "green" articles each week and then repost a link in a special page called, Caruba's Corner, by subject. His work has a sense of timelessness about it, so anyone perusing these articles in the future will find them equally insightful as they were when originally written. For Alan's latest thoughts go to his blog, Warning Signs. For his past works go to The National Anxiety Center. I would also recommend reading his last book, Right Answers.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Some time back I attempted to do a weekly update on the wonderful information published every week from the American Council on Science and Health. I wasn’t able to keep up with it because I went about it the wrong way. I attempted to make an article out of these posts, and quite frankly, it was too time consuming. My problem is that I have a j0b that interferes with my life.

It was also not real bright because as a member I already get a Daily Dispatch with the links already there, which makes posting very easy. Therefore I am going to attempt to do a weekly update once again because I really do feel that this information needs to be disseminated as far as possible.

These aren’t the only issues they outlined this week; they are the ones that interested me. Let’s start with:

Autism and vaccines: The supposed link was faked
Yesterday the world learned that Dr. Andrew Wakefield is a fraud British Medical Journal released the results of its documenting the premeditation of Wakefield and his lawyer as co-conspirators who were attempting to extort compensation from vaccine makers.

Vaccines to the rescue for chickenpox and pertussis
Since routine chickenpox vaccinations were implemented in 1995, yearly rates of chickenpox infections in the U.S. decreased by 80 to 90 percent while the proportion of Americans hospitalized due to the infection has fallen by over two-thirds, a new study by the CDC finds.

Environmental Working Group report on water is (typically) all wet
Yesterday also saw the release of another "study" by the influential radical advocacy organization Environmental Working Group (EWG). EWG studied the origins, precise chemical contents and the labels of 173 brands of bottled water and then rated them. But what was the purpose of this? All of the water bottles contained...well, water.

Fish oil and coronary disease: A possible treatment
A report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology provides further evidence that some patients with weakened hearts may benefit from eating a diet high in omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). These fatty acids are typically found in fish oil.

FDA sets guidelines on its regulation of tobacco products
Following up on a 2009 law which gave it the power to regulate tobacco products, the FDA announced yesterday that manufacturers must report to the agency by March 22 on whether their products are in any way more dangerous or more addictive than items which were on the market by February 15, 2007.

New drug approvals still down
Only 21 drugs were approved by the FDA in 2010. In 2009 and 2008, there were 25 and 24 drugs approved respectively, while 2007 marked an all-time low with only 18 new drugs approved.

ACSH Presents: Celebrities Vs. Science
December 30, 2010. We value movie stars and musicians for their entertainment value, not their scientific expertise. But when they weigh in on important issues pertaining to human health and get things wrong, it is important to set the record straight. Scientists affiliated with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) do just that. In the second edition of Celebrities Vs. Science they respond to one celebrity of a comment at a time.

Top health scares of 2010
In an published in The Daily Caller late last week ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan reminds us of the worst - and most unreasonable - health scares of last year.

PCBs and schools: A new health scare
As Dr. Whelan was exposing the health hoaxes of last year, the EPA chose to end the year by initiating a calling for schools across the country to replace old light fixtures containing PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). Might this be another health scare based on faulty science?

Breast cancer risks: Not just about family patterns
A study of 6,322 post-menopausal women undertaken by the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) Allegheny Center, in Pittsburgh, shows that while family history is a strong indicator of breast cancer risk, other factors taken together may be equally strong predictors.

A transplant obit is cause to commemorate as we also mourn
Last week brought through the Associated Press of the death of Ronald Lee Herrick, the first man ever to successfully provide an organ to another patient in a transplant operation. Herrick's death is a reminder both of the miraculous advances in surgical procedure which have taken place in recent decades and of the development of pharmaceuticals to ward off or treat transplant rejection, such as cyclosporin and rapamycin.

If there is a health scare today, the American Council on Science and Health will most likely have the answer by tomorrow; and for members it will appear in your e-mail. No effort on your part, except to read the answer. All that the ACSH is interested in are the facts and they are prepared to follow them wherever they lead. Who can ask for more? Please Donate Now!

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

I really find it interesting to see those who normally would be foaming at the mouth about the evils of pesticides discuss this rising plague of bed bugs on their television shows, with clear trepidation as to what should be done. The View some time back had someone from Bed Bug Central showing what to look for and what they could possibly use to protect themselves. Although they now knew that putting encasement covers over the mattress and box springs was a good thing, you could tell from their manner that they knew that this wasn’t “the” answer and that in the real world, with the regulatory realities we have to deal with…..there is no answer.

My mother is 86, so when this bedbug plague first broke out I asked her if she had them in her youth and what they did before DDT. She said that they washed everything in the house thoroughly and took everything outside and washed everything, including the springs, frames and mattresses at least twice a year. I asked if that worked and she laughed and said for a while it was better. And that is the real point. They never got rid of them entirely!

Renee Corea hosts a web site called, New York vs Bed Bugs, which has done terrific work in outlining the history of bed bugs, the extant of the problem and what needs to be done about it. I highly recommend going back into some of the much older posts. Renee did a magnificent job. Renee asked in one post what everyone thought about the advice given to a consumer by a man named Richard Fagerlund, who apparently writes a column for the San Francisco Chronicle called, “Ask The Bugman”. (please read this link in order to understand the rest of the article)

No matter what anyone says…this will not work! Having said that I must say that it will work to some limited degree, but the residual impact will be little better than the heat treatments he eschews, and probably won’t kill as many bedbugs as heat treatments.

Another dimension to be considered is the amount of work involved. This will take hours to do properly and how many times will someone do this, especially in an apartment building where this type of problem is rampant? How about old people or the infirm? All of this is impossible for a large portion of the population. All of these “natural” remedies have a degree of efficacy, but they were all available in days gone by with the exception of diatomaceous earth (DE was available in the 1880’s, but not in wide use until the 1950’s), so if this stuff was so great why didn’t we get rid of them before DDT?

Everyone involved will make a lot of money, and make no mistake about it; many companies only increased their revenue this last year because of bedbugs. Let's not lose sight of reality.....until inexpensive, efficacious chemistry that is easy to use is made available to the general public this problem will not go away.

There will never be anything that could be called low cost heat. It is labor intensive; cost intensive to use and the equipment is very expensive. And afterwards there is no residual impact. The potential for re-introduction is just as great after the treatment as before. There must be some form of effective residual impact in order to have long term effect on the emerging population or those that may be re-introduced.

The efficacious, inexpensive “something” that everyone wants must be chemistry, which would include dusts. I have outlined four criteria that must be met if we are to eradicate this plague that is afflicting the nation. Let’s see if modern techniques and materials are successful in meeting these criteria.

Efficacious:1. Heat absolutely works on any bedbugs that remain in the immediate area.2. Fumigation absolutely will kill every bedbug in a facility. There is nowhere to hide or escape to.3. Vacuuming and steaming are only partially effective.4. Current chemistry is ineffective, either totally or partially.

Inexpensive:1. None of the above meets this criterion. Even with the use of current chemistry, so much has to be done (and more than once) that the cost starts to spiral out of control.

Available to the general public:1. The first two can only be provided by professionals.2. Vacuuming and steaming don’t work well in anyone’s hands.3. The chemistry is even less effective in the public’s hands than those of professionals.

Easy to Use:1. The more complicated to the end user the less effective the answer will be, if used at all. None of the above can possible meet this criterion.

So does all of this meet all four criteria? The answer is a resounding NO! Answer: Failure!

The only solution is efficacious, inexpensive chemistry that is available to the general public and is simple to use; chemistry that will have an effective residual impact on bedbugs.

As for baits, which have made big inroads into the pest control industry; unless something really radical and serendipitous appears, gel baits will never work on bed bugs. My stand for efficacious, inexpensive chemistry available to the general public is based on history. I also feel strongly that everything that we are told should bear some resemblance to what we see going on around us. History and current events brought me to this conclusion long ago; even as I saw so many from our industry displaying “sanctimony” about pesticides and how Integrated Pest Management was the answer. Well....it hasn't worked either, especially since what constitutes IPM in bed bug control is even more ethereal than ever. My views will not change just because they aren’t part of the latest philosophical flavor of the day, and even if I am rowing against the tide….this is a tide that is changing…..and when that happens I will be in the lead.

In the end, it is the least among us who count the most. If they cannot rid themselves of this problem, the problem will never go away. The bed bug pressure placed on society's businesses and residences will be overwhelming and unending. Society’s insistence on safety at any cost has been based mostly on scares promoted by the anti-pesticide crowd, going back to the first health scare known as the Great Cranberry Scare of 1959 and they have followed this same pattern ever since.

The perspective on what is constituted safe will change as more and more issues requiring older technology emerge. Make no mistake about this; if bed bugs were vectors of West Nile Virus, the Black Death, or hemorrhagic fever this issue would have been resolved long ago.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

By Alan CarubaThe United Nations conference being held in Bali is designed to create and/or maintain a climate of crisis based on the Big Lie that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions must be limited in order to save their earth from "global warming."

Yesterday, December 5, as two inches of snow fell on Washington, D.C., the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee debated legislation sponsored by Sens. John Warner (R-VA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) that would impose limits on "greenhouse gas" emissions.

There was a reason why, in 1997, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to reject the UN Kyoto Protocol on Climate Control. It was to avoid harm to the U.S. economy and neither the Clinton, nor the Bush Administrations have taken steps to impose limits. The proposed legislation would cost, by some estimates, $4 trillion to $6 trillion over the next forty years if passed.

Over and over, in just the same way the Big Lie of Global Warming is being put forward, critics like myself must repeat the basic science of the earth's atmosphere, noting the very small role of CO2--a mere 0.038% as compared to nitrogen and oxygen. We must remind people that CO2 is essential to the growth of all forms of earth's vegetation, but most especially the food crops that feed animals, including ourselves. Without CO2 all life on earth dies.

At the heart of the environmental movement is a deep hatred of the human race. Many advocates of "Deep Ecology" believe that humans are a "cancer" on the earth.

The United Nations, possibly the most corrupt international institute to ever exist, is at the heart of the effort to deceive the peoples of the world that a climate crisis exists. While it turns a blind eye to the genocide in Darfur and the threat of fanatical Islam, they would impose limits on energy use that would deter any economic growth in undeveloped nations and restrict it in industrialized ones--exempting both China and India that have a combined population of two billion of the earth's six billion people.

This is both absurd and criminal.

Speak out or watch your children and grandchildren fall victim to this program of global genocide.

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This first appeared here in 2007. Alan has been a profession writer for most of his life. He has written several books and produces a daily column, "Warning Signs",which is far ranging and well researched. It is also disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. Alan is also frequently appears in the Canada Free Press. If you would wish to peruse some of Alan’s older works please visit his National Anxiety Center.

In addition, he is a longtime book reviewer and has a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews.

For information on his professional skills, Caruba.com is the place to go!

Monday, January 3, 2011

I would like to extend my personal commendation to now former Governor Strickland of Ohio for taking a stand for Ohio’s citizenry and the citizens of the entire nation. He sent this letter to Lisa Jackson, current administrator of the United States Environmental Agency, regarding the EPA’s position on the use of propoxur to defeat this plague of bed bugs that is infecting the nation. This well developed and well thought out letter is dated December 27th, 2010. In his letter he points out the inconsistencies and unscientific stands that EPA has taken over this issue. If ever there was an issue that clearly shows that the EPA is the political animal that President Richard Nixon created and intended; this is it.

Clearly Governor Strickland's letter was sent as an act of integrity and concern for the people of Ohio in the last days of his administration. He is to be commended by all of Ohio’s citizens.

Somewhere along the line everyone is going to come to a startling conclusion. The EPA isn’t a department of the government; it is an agency! Supposedly it works for the Department of the Interior and is subject to the authority of that Secretary of the Interior; supposedly!

And at some point someone is going to come to the conclusion that they are an entirely too powerful, too intrusive, and an entirely unscientific agency at that. It will also come as a shock to many to discover that a big chunk of their “legislative” authority did not come from the U.S. Congress, but from the courts.

Although the EPA may have been instrumental in the ‘70s for establishing clean water and air they got out of control. There are seven pieces of legislation the Congress needs to address in order to fix this problem.

• The Water Pollution Control Act (which later became the Clean Water Act)
• The Clean Air Act
• The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (which dealt with waste disposal)
• The Safe Drinking Water Act
• The Federal Insecticide, Rodenticide and Fungicide Act (FIRFA)
• The Superfund, and
• The Surface Mining and Reclamation Act.

I would have added the Endangered Species Act, since no other act has the potential to impact private land ownership as this one. This is one of the most outrageous and abusive pieces of legislation the U.S. Congress ever passed. But this wasn't an area in which he worked apparently.

Dr. Lehr was part of the group that developed the programs he outlines, and he feels that “During that decade we did a terrific job”. He goes on the say; “However in the ‘80s that work was complete and then the pendulum swung. Environmental advocacy groups saw the environment as a way to promote big government and liberal ideas that reduced individual freedom, and threw a monkey wrench in the path of progress and capitalism.”

He goes on the say that, “Quite frankly, US EPA has done nothing useful since 1980, and is, in my opinion, the worst agency today in the federal government and one that could be disbanded with no negative impact on the public. Each state has their own EPA and they do a good enough job that we really don’t need the anymore."

This whole idea that “green” is everything isn’t new. He went on to say that, “We found threads of green in the conservation movement and in philosophical writings. The idea that the earth and nature is superior to man goes back a very long way.”

Make no mistake about this. Irrespective of one's personal beliefs, this is a battle between neo-paganism i.e. eco-religion that makes mankind a creation of nature and traditional Judaic-Christian values where the Earth was created for mankind. The Druids would be very comfortable with the modern green movement, especially with the idea that people have to be sacrificed. Oops…there are modern Druids and they are greenies….imagine that!

About Me

Green is a mixture of blue and yellow. That is the only factual definition of green that will stand the test of time. After that; any other definition is a corruption of a perfectly nice color. I have been an exterminator for 35 years. I have served as a trustee on industry association boards representing pesticide and fertilizer applicators actively for almost 25 years. I believe that what we do isn't just a job; it's a mission! We are that thin gray line that mans the wall telling the world; "no one will harm you on my watch". I also believe that to be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against. Our greatest worry is those within who support and facilitate their misanthropic goals.